The fab2asm project will develop a new manufacturing technology for 3D integration of microelectronics and microsystems which is simultaneously very fast and very accurate – which currently is the bottle neck limiting industry take-up.

3D integration is a rapidly emerging technology that vertically stacks and interconnects multiple materials, technologies, and functional components to form highly integrated micro- and nanosystems for cross-sectorial applications such as medical implantable devices, intelligent sensors, flash memory, computer memory, camera chips, and radio frequency devices in mobile phones. 3D integration is a very promising area of technological development and shows huge economic potential.

The state-of-the-art technology for 3D integration relies on robotic pick-and-place machines and machine vision, which cannot be simultaneously very fast and very accurate. If high precision e.g. a micrometer is needed, the cycle time of the integration can be very long, from e.g. over ten seconds to minutes, or even not achievable.

The FAB2ASM project will overcome this conflict by joining the traditional robotic tools with the physics of self-alignment – where tiny chips will align due to surface tension of liquid or other physical forces acting at the microscale.

FAB2ASM will develop a highly industry relevant technology that not only reuses most of the industrial process steps, but on the other hand dramatically improves the performance of the integration process in terms of precision and efficiency: FAB2ASM will allow handling of small (100 µm) and/or thin dies (20 µm) and ultra high speed assembly (40,000 unit per hour), while ensuring industry proven reliability. Three industry-led demonstrators will validate the achievements in the fields of manufacturing equipment, photonic IC and microelectronics.